Ryan budget: Challenge to W.H., DOA

Paul Ryan rolled out the latest version of his vision for America Tuesday, laying out a plan to balance the budget within a decade by slashing Obamacare, Medicaid and Medicare while accepting the higher income tax rates embedded in January’s “fiscal cliff” deal.

The 10-year fiscal blueprint, which relies in part on an implausible repeal of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care overhaul, projects savings of $4.63 trillion over 10 years, yielding a surplus of $7 billion by fiscal 2023.

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The Wisconsin Republican’s budget is dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate, but it is an enticing political weapon for both sides because it creates an agenda for the GOP that is so clearly at odds with that of the president and his allies in Congress.

Its push to redefine entitlement programs and keep tight caps on annual spending ensure that it will drive both the policy debate in Washington and the parties’ early efforts to draw campaign-trail contrasts in advance of the 2014 midterm election.

Ryan called it “an invitation” to the White House and Senate Democrats to discuss options for a balanced budget.

“We believe that we owe the American people a balanced budget,” he said. Democrats like the clearly poll-tested term “balance,” too — rather than bringing the spending and revenue in line, they want to take what they call a “balanced approach” to reducing the deficit that includes tax increases and budget cuts. Ryan released his plan just hours before Obama was set to meet on Capitol Hill with Senate Democrats, who are on the verge of releasing a budget proposal that would raise $1 trillion in revenue over the next decade.

That’s better, they believe, than slashing spending as the only means for reducing annual deficits.

“Our opponents will shout austerity, but let’s put this in perspective,” Ryan wrote in an op-ed posted to The Wall Street Journal’s website Monday night. “On our current path, we’ll spend $46 trillion over the next 10 years. Under our proposal, we’ll spend $41 trillion. On the current path, spending will increase by 5 percent each year. Under our proposal, it will increase by 3.4 percent.”

The White House balked at the plan.

"By choosing not to ask for a single dime of deficit reduction from closing taxloopholes for the wealthy and well-connected, this budget identifies deep cuts to investments like education and research – investments critical to creating jobs and growing the middle class," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. "And to save money, this budget would turn Medicare into a voucher program — undercutting the guaranteed benefits that seniors have earned and forcing them to pay thousands more out of their own pockets. We've tried this top-down approach before. The president still believes it is the wrong course for America."

Democrats say they can’t wait to hang copies of the Ryan budget around the necks of Republican candidates on the campaign trail.

“To govern is to choose, and the Republican budget is the wrong choice for our country. The GOP is dead set on balancing the budget on the backs of working families, seniors and kids’ education — but the American people were given a clear choice during the last election cycle, and they rejected that approach,” Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee said in a statement released just after the Ryan budget was made public.

In a Monday conference call, Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said his organization would go after Republicans “on the air, on the ground, in the mail and online” over the budget.